Season over, team ponders its next moves
Quarterback Derek Carr said Sunday that he would have been ready to play in the Super Bowl had his team made it there.
That’s your fantasy-news update, Raiders fans.
The reality is that the Raiders lost their wildcard playoff game Saturday in Houston, 27-14.
The only healing the Raiders are concerned with now is to their collective soul. Their season ended with a thud, and on Sunday, they were, in the words of head coach Jack Del Rio, “still a little raw.”
As the players cleaned out their lockers, Del Rio delivered his postmortem. He saluted the team’s progress — Oakland was 12-4 after going 7-9 in 2015 — and said he would demand more next season.
Specifically, Del Rio cited the need to upgrade the interior line’s pass rush and the
team’s secondary. He chalked up his team’s regular-seasonending loss at Denver (24-6), a lackluster performance, to a team epidemic of flu and colds.
Carr, who suffered a broken leg on Christmas Eve and watched Saturday’s game at home with his family and with former Raiders teammate Rod Streater, dropped by the Raiders’ HQ and said his broken leg is healing ahead of schedule.
Would he really have been able to play in the Super Bowl?
“Absolutely,” Carr said. “Yeah. Like, everyone was telling me, ‘No chance,’ ‘Unlikely,’ ‘Not gonna happen.’ That didn’t mean anything to me, and I’d say, ‘OK, thanks.’ I’d have been out there.”
That’s presuming Del Rio would have replaced Connor Cook, who would have been 3-0 in three rugged playoff games. Again, that’s all fantasy. Del Rio smiled at the notion of Carr returning to play five weeks after breaking a leg, seeming to chalk it up to Carr’s positive spirit.
Del Rio, asked about areas of needed team improvement, cited two.
“I would say in particular, interior pass rush is critical for us to get that going,” Del Rio said, citing injuries to Mario Edwards and Denico Autry. “We were not nearly effective enough . ... I don’t feel like we got enough inside push.”
The Raiders’ second-year head coach said the team played some good defense but gave up too many big plays.
“Explosive plays, whether you like it or not, they always come back to the secondary,” Del Rio said. “Even if you have a front line that is full of holes, the (backfield) has a chance to cap the play before it goes explosive. Runs that get out big time typically have to do with a missed tackle, poor leverage, missed assignment, something along those lines. In the back end, obviously balls go over the top of your head, missed tackles, missed assignments lead to long passes as well. That’s just the way it is.
“DB coaches will talk about it all the time like, ‘We’re the ones, when you’re playing out there on that island, there is no hiding from it.’ You’re there, that guy gets behind you somehow, and everybody in the stadium can see it. There’s really no sugarcoating that.”
Del Rio noted said he’s in agreement with general manager Reggie McKenzie, who recently said he is building the team for the long haul, not for a quick run at glory.
“Nobody wants to take one swing and hope that you have a magical year one time,” Del Rio said. “I think you want to build your roster strong, build your team strong and build the culture strong ... and compete at a championship level year after year. That’s what the goal is.”
Another goal is to identify and develop the backup quarterback. Cook, third string until Carr’s injury and Matt McGloin’s poor sub job in Denver, looks like next season’s backup to Carr, even after Saturday, when he was 18-for-45 and had a 30.0 passer rating.
Carr said he liked much of Cook’s decision-making Saturday and told the rookie, “‘Bro, you made some great throws. ... Whatever you do, just don’t lose confidence, because you can’t be in a harder situation than playing those guys for your very first’ ” NFL start.
Cook, asked about the team’s mood on the flight home from Houston, said, “It was good. Guys obviously were down in the locker room after the game, but once we got on the bus, once we got on the plane, guys started to lighten up.
“I think that’s what’s so great about us — no one is really blaming anyone. We’re a very close group. I think it’s a lot like a college team. We have a fairly young group of guys and the chemistry that we have is awesome . ... We’re all brothers. We’re always going to have each other’s backs.”
As for what he learned in his first NFL start, Cook boiled it down to the basics.
“To be more accurate, obviously,” he said. “Don’t sail it over guys’ heads and throw an interception. Get rid of the ball quicker and use my checkdowns.”